A presentation I gave at an Ark Group seminar on experimenting with internal social computing tools

1. The Great British
American Tobacco
Social Media
Experiment
Richard Hare
19th August 2009

2. Social Media
“Web 1.0 was all about
connecting people. It
was an interactive
space… people to
people… that was what
the Web was supposed
to be all along.”
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, 2006
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/
podcast/dwi/cm-int082206.txt

3. “Connect, collaborate, innovate…”
Social Media at British American Tobacco:
 1997: On-line Communities
 2004: Blogs
 2008: Social Networking

4. British American Tobacco at a glance
World’s most international tobacco group
 Business in 180 countries, over 300 brands
 Global market share approx. 21%
 Market leadership in more than 50 countries
 Over 56,000 employees
Most recent performance (2008)
 £12.1 bn revenue
 £ 3.7 bn profit from operations
 £22.0 bn tax contribution
PICTURE 4 PICTURE 3 PICTURE 2 PICTURE 1
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5. Fear, uncertainty, doubt
British American Tobacco
BAT OVERALL 2006 (38719) vs. 2 BENCHMARKS
Category 2: Open Minded
Total
Unfavour-
Total Favourable Diff ? able
13. Little effort is made to get the opinions and A 51 10 39
thinking of employees in this company. (N)
B 47 4* 10 43 *
C 49 2* 14 * 37 *
17. It is safe to say what you think in this company. A 54 13 33
B 52 2* 13 34 *
C 63 -8 * 13 25 *
31a. This company has established a climate A 65 13 23
where: People can challenge our traditional
ways of doing things B 62 3* 13 25 *
C 66 -2 * 15 * 19 *
33. Differing opinions are openly discussed in A 75 7 18
reaching decisions in my work team.
B 74 1* 7 19 *
C 74 1* 10 * 16 *
0 25 50 75 100
(N) indicates 'Disagreeing' is the Favourable Response * indicates a statistically significant difference
Legend
A. BAT OVERALL 2006 (38719) C. ISR GLOBAL HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPANIES NORM (149193)
B. BAT OVERALL 2005 (35428)

6. Communities: Ten Years, Five Platforms

7. 2004: Workshop: ChangeNet

8. 2005: CommunityBuilder

9. Timing: 2006 World Cup Forum

10. Management Trainee Community

11. Use: June 2003 – July 2009
CommunitySpace
Quarterly Views and Visits
140 16000
Thousands
120 14000
12000
100
10000
80
Views
Visits
8000
60
6000
40
4000
20 2000
0 0
Views Visits

12. 2004: “I want to try blogging”
Tom
(Change and Communications Manager,
Global Operations and I.T.)

13. From SiteBuilder… (2005)

14. …to BlogCentral (2006)

15. Set expectations

16. Simple to set up…

17. …simple to post

18. Going Live

19. BlogCentral in 2009 (January – July)
 189,611 pages viewed
 52,402 visits
 7605 readers
 3000 readers per month
 2 directors have started blogging
 3126 comments
 2429 posts
 255 blogs

20. BlogCentral: August 2006 – July 2009
BlogCentral Users: Monthly
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Users

21. Friendster to Facebook
2003 2005
2007 2007

22. 2008: Connect

23. A global internal directory

24. Interact homepage with newsfeed

25. Connect use: 2008-2009
• Monthly users up from 187 in Jan 2008 to
5831 in Jan 2009
• Q1 users up from 236 in 2008 to 10276 in
2009
• 17,000 users from a potential 26,000
• Visits more than quadrupled
• Page views quintupled
• 120 people update their Connect record
every day

26. Connect: November 2007- July 2009
Connect
Site Visits and Pages Read:
Monthly
200 30000
Thousands
180
25000
160
140
20000
120
Views
Visits
100 15000
80
10000
60
40
5000
20
0 0
Views Visits

27. Wider range of pages viewed
Connect users and profiles viewed:
Weekly
5000
4500
4000
3500
3000
2500
2000
1500
1000
500
0
Profiles view ed Users

28. Questions and discussion
Contact: richard_hare@bat.com
richard@flareconsulting.com
www.twitter.com/richardhare
Blog: www.richardhare.com